On a Wyoming Ranch, Feds Sacrifice Tomorrow’s Water to Mine Uranium Today

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GILLETTE, Wyo. — On a lonely stretch at the edge of the Great Plains, rolling grassland presses up against a crowning escarpment called the Pumpkin Buttes. The land appears bountiful, but it is stingy, straining to produce enough sustenance for the herds of cattle and sheep on its arid prairies.

“It’s a tough way to make a living,” said John Christensen, whose family has worked this private expanse, called Christensen Ranch, for more than a century.

Christensen has made ends meet by allowing prospectors to tap into minerals and oil and gas beneath his bucolic hills. But from the start, it has been a Faustian bargain.

As dry as this land may be, underground, vast reservoirs hold billions of gallons of water suitable for drinking, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Yet every day injection wells pump more than 200,000 gallons of toxic and radioactive waste from uranium mining into Christensen’s aquifers.

What is happening in this remote corner of Wyoming affects few people other than Christensen — at least for now.

But a roiling conflict between state and federal regulators over whether to allow more mining at Christensen Ranch — and the damage that comes with it — has pitted the feverish drive for domestic energy against the need to protect water resources for the future. The outcome could have far-reaching implications, setting a precedent for similar battles sparked by the resurgence of uranium mining in Texas, South Dakota, New Mexico and elsewhere.

Twenty-five years ago, the EPA and Wyoming officials agreed that polluting the water beneath Christensen Ranch was an acceptable price for producing energy there.

The Safe Drinking Water Act forbids injecting industrial waste into or above drinking water aquifers, but the EPA issued what are called aquifer exemptions that gave mine operators at the ranch permission to ignore the law. Over the last three decades, the agency has issued more than 1,500 such exemptions nationwide, allowing energy and mining companies to pollute portions of at least 100 drinking water aquifers.

When the EPA granted the exemptions for Christensen Ranch, its scientists believed that the reservoirs underlying the property were too deep to hold desirable water, and that even if they did, no one was likely to use it. They also believed the mine operators could contain and remediate pollution in the shallower rock layers where mining takes place.

Over time, shifting science and a changing climate have upended these assumptions, however. An epochal drought across the West has made water more precious and improved technology has made it economically viable to retrieve water from extraordinary depths, filter it and transport it.

“What does deep mean?” asked Mike Wireman, a hydrologist with the EPA who also works with the World Bank on global water supply issues. “There is a view out there that says if it’s more than a few thousand feet deep we don’t really care … just go ahead and dump all that waste. There is an opposite view that says no, that is not sustainable water management policy.”

Federal regulators also have become less certain that it is possible to clean up contamination from uranium mining. At Christensen Ranch and elsewhere, efforts to cleanse radioactive pollutants from drinking water aquifers near the surface have failed and uranium and its byproducts have sometimes migrated beyond containment zones, records show.

In 2007, when the Christensen Ranch mine operator proposed expanding its operations, bringing more injection wells online and more than tripling the amount of waste it was injecting into underground reservoirs, Wyoming officials eagerly gave their permission, but the EPA found itself at a crossroads.

If the agency did what Wyoming wanted, it could destroy water that someday could be necessary and undermine its ability to protect aquifers in other places. If it rejected the plan, the agency risked political and legal backlash from state officials and the energy industry.

The EPA declined interview requests from ProPublica for this story and did not respond to a lengthy set of questions submitted in writing. After learning that ProPublica contacted several EPA employees directly involved in the debate over Christensen Ranch, the agency instructed staffers not to discuss the matter without agency approval.

For the last five years, as regulators have vacillated over what to do, John Christensen has experienced a similar ambivalence.

His property is speckled with thousands of small, mysterious black boxes. From each dark cube, a mixture of chemicals is pumped into the ground to dissolve the ore and separate out the uranium so that it can be sucked back out and refined for nuclear fuel.

Horses graze behind a gate on a dirt road that winds across this 35,000-acre tract, 50 miles south of Gillette. Nearby, a small metal sign is strung to a cattle guard with chicken wire: “Caution. Radioactive Material.”

Christensen still places a tenuous trust in the system that promises to keep his water safe and leave his ranch clean. He relies on the royalty income and believes the national pursuit of energy is important enough to warrant a few compromises.

Yet if he had it to do over again, he’s not sure he would lease out the rights to put a uranium mine on Christensen Ranch.

“It’s probably worthwhile for this generation,” he said. “You just don’t know about future generations.”

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101 comments

Man can live without food, and without uranium, but not water. What's wrong with this picture???

First - the Wyoming Department of Environment is nothing more than a bought and paid for stakeholder for mining, ranching, and any big business big enough to buy off the WY Republican legislature.

Second - The entire area's aquifer for hundreds of square miles will be polluted for centuries with this area a complete wasteland with no agricultural value and little grazing value - so the short term profit by a few mining executives and their shareholders will be overshadowed by the long term loss of the land and aquifer whose value over both the short and long term to all is huge compared to the profits eked out from yellow cake.

Third - It's guaranteed that none of those executives would tolerate living anywhere near or in the filth and pollution it created for those profits.

I have nothing against making tons of money, but not at such a terrible cost to the earth, its animals, plants and the livability for humans.

This is absolute insanity. Would a government agency make it legal for terrorists to drop chemcal weapons on the earth if someone could profit from it? Where does it end? When there is no more earth to mine pollute rape and pillage for profit, or when all the humans are dead because there is no water left to drink or air that is breathable without a spacesuit?

Those who caused or allowed this disaster to knowingly take place will be punished severe